This year witnessed a number of serious hacks, which led to hundreds and thousands of pictures being leaked, mainly nude content. In September 2014, over 2887 pictures of 136 celebrities were leaked from iCloud, and content became popular in the underworld as ‘The Fappening’. A few weeks after the iCloud nude leaks, the photo leaks became huge with the event of ‘Snappening’.
About 2,00,000 pictures and videos of over 2,60,000 Snapchat users were leaked. While Snapchat confirmed that their servers were not breached, they mentioned that the leaked images came from another service provider’s servers. It is shameful that the right to privacy is not being obeyed by hosting servers leave alone the hackers.
These incidents force one to think how safe is the content you share online, because netizens love sharing pictures. According to CM Wizard’s data, everyday, 450,000,000 pictures and videos on Snapchat, about 500,000,000 on WhatsApp, around 300,000,000 on Facebook, 200,000,000 on Instagram and 50,000,000 on Flickr, are shared. Out of all the pictures shared by the netizens, 40 per cent pictures are selfies, 20% of which are nude. The rest of the 60 per cent comprises of pictures of animals, food, landscapes and others.
The data by CM Wizard also shows, that 42 per cent of the nude pictures are shared via Snapchat, 17 per cent on WhatsApp and a comparatively smaller number through Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox and other online apps.
But do you ever wonder how and where do your pictures get leaked from? The pictures and videos that you save up on the cloud are most vulnerable to be leaked. According to CM Wizard, 32 per cent of the times, the content gets leaked via the cloud storage.
The second most vulnerable location is the mailbox. About 26 per cent content is leaked when a user clicks on the scam links received in the mailbox. Insecure Wi-Fi and using third party apps can also be a major reason of content leak.
Also, we do not realise, but many a times, when we give our phones to be repaired or fixed, at a service centre, there are high chances of your content be accessed and misused.
And here is the scary part! Your pictures and videos that get leaked or hacked can be misused in several ways. The content can be used in scams, for SNS phishing, on pornographic websites or it could be shared on websites that are accessible to the whole world.
Further, when your inbox, cloud or some app is hacked, it is not just the pictures and videos that can be leaked. Your account passwords, payment details, email information and various other sensitive details are at a risk in such a situation.
Looking at the situation, we suggest that the users be very careful about the nature of content they share online. On the other hand, the software and app developers need to pay a lot of attention on the security of content, and the apps vulnerability and ensure the safety of content.
However, by this we do not mean that the online apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp are unsafe, mostly the third party apps are responsible for such leaks. Anti virus and the malwares downloaded on smartphones and PCs could spy on a user and leak the content they hold in their phone. So even the matter that is kept privately saved in the smartphone could be leaked by third party apps. Therefore, to be safe, a user must install only trusted antiwares and the third party apps on their smartphones and PCs.
